miki2000milos Wrote:
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> umm.. how do I alter the setup to go faster
> through corners without altering straightline
> speed? :D
Haha, welcome to car setup 101.
It's hard to find ways to increase cornering speed and keep up the same straightline speed. This is a trade-off usually, at least as far as aero setup is concerned - which is a lot easier to do than the mechanical setup.
First things first, DO NOT start with the values you see once you choose custom setup on the screen where you can choose between your own setup and the 'track-specific setup'. Look up your magic data file (if it's not there, create it with CMagic, see other places for how-tos), and use the wing values, gear ratios and brake balance values you see there to start with. Take note of them and set them in your custom setup.
That way you'll begin with that 'slightly' understeer-y setup Geoff Crammond & Co. devised for any given circuit during game development.
I usually start off with getting my wing levels and gear ratios right - imagine a graph with laptime on the vertical and wing levels on the horizontal axis. It'll always be a bowl-like shape for a generic circuit - too low wings and you won't have enought downforce to get around the track in good time, thus you'll get high laptime values. And too high on the wings and you won't have enough top speed to get around the straights in good time, thus you'll also get high laptime values. The lowest values are usually at a compromise level, somewhere in the middle - they certainly are for Interlagos, for example.
So start off with trial-and-erroring wing values (set front wing 1-2 notches higher then the rear to help turn that understeer-y car better) and find that sweet spot where you have enough wing for corners, but enough top speed for straights. After each and every change, change gears ratios too: 1-2 rear wing goes with 63-64 top ratio, 8-10 goes with 59-60, 18-20 with 55-56 (in vanilla physics). Spread the other gears evenly between 1st and the top gears.
Then it's time to click on the 'Advanced' button on the car setup screen and look at the mechanical setup - remember, I only do this if I'm still not beating the AI, because this is hardcore physics. Your understeer-y setup is most visible here: you can safely go down 200-300 on the front anti-roll bar and some on the springs as well for most tracks (Interlagos, for instance). This will instantly help turn the car better - and crucially, this is the part where you don't sacrifice top speed for cornering speed. The downside is that this doesn't make as big a swing in the car behaviour as the aero changes do.
In general... meh, this is too difficult to explain here.
Look up resources on the internet, seaching for stuff like 'suspension tuning guidelines' on Google.
On, and one more thing: Monaco and the Hungaroring are extremities, you can safely max out wings there and find the corresponding gears, it'll surely be the fastest as they are maximum downforce tracks anyway. Conversely, Monza and Hockenheim are usually fine with 1 or 2 notches of rear wing, they are low downforce (don't forget to find the gears). Montreal and Indy are low-to-medium downforce, so your best guess for downforce will be around 4-8 rear wing, while the rest are medium-to-high with 12-16 rear wings. Interlagos, for example is around the 12-ish. Could be 10 or 8, if you want a really slippery car. A1-Ring is similar too.
Good luck and be patient.
My workthread - [www.grandprixgames.org]
Full of classic F1/non-F1 track layouts
My blog about F1 performance analysis - [thef1formbook.wordpress.com]